1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital recording technique, and more particularly, relates to an image displaying method applied to a digital recording apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a personal computer or other systems for processing and storing digital data, a file system is used for arranging the storage space and managing the access thereof. For example, FAT32 (File Allocation Table 32-bit version), NTFS (New Technology File System) are popular file systems standards. The FAT32 file system standard, however, has a 4 gigabyte (Gbyte) limitation on its file sizes. Since computer files or other information products have seldom exceeded this 4 Gbyte restriction in the past, such a limitation has caused little disturbance for file storage and reading.
Nowadays, however, electronic products have greater processing and computing abilities corresponding to improvements in semiconductor technology, and thus the cost of storage space is decreasing while various kinds of electronic apparatus are increasingly able to store and process large amounts of data. This phenomenon is most apparent in the field of multimedia audiovisual applications. For example, image definition standards have improved from standard definition (SD) to high definition (HD). For hardware, novel apparatus including digital televisions, set top boxes (STB), and digital video recorder (DVR) help to provide high-quality audiovisual enjoyment and convenience for the user. Since the amount of audiovisual data in current and future multimedia audiovisual trends will create files greater than tens of gigabytes in size, the current FAT32 file size limitation will cause inconvenience in managing files, creating displeasure in the enjoyment of this audiovisual content. To work around this, audiovisual information belonging to the same content (for example, a movie) must be separated into several files and stored, therefore making the managing and reading of such files inconvenient. The same situation will occur while applying image compression techniques or other multimedia audiovisual processing techniques; for example, compressed files generated by the DivX encoding technique have a limitation of 1 Gbyte, resulting in the same problem as mentioned above.
Consider a digital video apparatus such as a digital recorder, an STB or a digital TV with integrated digital recording and displaying functions. If such an apparatus is to display pre-recorded or downloaded image files belonging to the same content (for example, a movie), it must determine the next file according to the filename order and display the next file after the current file is finished. Such a method does not classify the files as belonging to a particular content, so if a file that does not belong to this same content exists, such a method cannot distinguish the “isolated” file, and the file will still be displayed.
Also, if a seek operation is desired to be performed on the content (for example, reviewing and searching within a movie), the seeking range can only comprise the current displayed file's range and the cross-file seeking cannot be performed. In addition, the unavoidable stop and delay while ending the previous file and starting the next file is a major factor in worsening the user experience.